What is the New Evangelization?
In the Thirteenth Century St. Francis of Assisi is credited with saying, “Preach the gospel at all times and, if necessary, use words,” so the “new evangelization” isn’t exactly new.
What’s changed then? Beginning with the papacy of John Paul II, church leadership has become increasingly concerned with a modern reality: secularism, particularly in the West. In response, John Paul II often talked about a need for a “new evangelization” to bring people back to the church to combat what Pope Benedict XVI later referred to as “the secularization process,” the declining power and position of the church in the historically Christian nations of Western Europe and the proliferation of positions in opposition to church teaching, such as the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, contraception, the death penalty, and lack of attention to the poor and marginalized.
New Evangelization efforts can be seen in the attempts to grow and sustain a Catholic community, which includes calling on all Catholics to share the gospel in their individual lives, creating Anglican ordinariates, establishing ongoing talks with the Society of St. Pius X to lift their excommunication, implementing changes to the liturgy, and instructing church organizations and institutions such as universities and charities to bolster their Catholic identity.
Some of the methods of the New Evangelization aren’t smiled upon by all in the church. Advocates of social justice and missionaries are concerned that an overemphasis on a Catholic identity can impede ecumenical work or even put missionaries in non-Christian nations at risk.
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